Got that title? I’ll translate: This is the first bed quilt I’ve made in second Great Depression, made out of “scraps,” as is only fit in these economic times.

Well, the title could possibly contain exaggerations of various sorts.

Nevertheless, I am making a bed quilt. Not an art quilt. Not quilted art. Not art at all, in fact. And I am using nothing but what I can find in my storage area.

Jer and I have developed allergies to down comforters, which is what we have preferred to sleep under for many years. I have a storage area jammed full of fabric and, worse, a tidily hanging bar of wool batting. (I think I bought it just prior to becoming obsessed with oil painting, which in fact does not involve wool batting. At least not the way I do it.) So I decided to make a warm wool quilt from whatever scraps I had around. And to make it quickly — winter is acomin’ in….

Along with the bolt of batting, I had some partial bolts of handwoven fabric, left over from a couple of commissions I did, one of them for an importer of Guatemalan fabrics. Now for quick pieced bed quilts, there’s nothing better than to start with a bolt or part of a bolt of a single, handsome varigated fabric:

Of course, there’s never quite enough big pieces, and there’s always the backing that needs to somehow fit with the surface, so I dug out a pile of backing fabrics:

Somehow the hand-dyed pieces which predominate in my stores right now didn’t work with the woven surface, so these are all commercial fabrics (yes, I still have commercial fabrics from the 1990’s), reds, browns, blacks, beiges, and even that black and white (which I didn’t use).

Here’s what the top looks like:

And here’s what an early version of the back looks like:

My hope is to finish this baby in under 8 hours — and it looks like it will happen. I am spending almost as much time ironing the fabrics as I am seaming them. Of course, I haven’t started the actual quilting yet. But I’m planning on broad patterning and wide spacing. And then cuddling under the results as the winter creeps toward us. –June